It’s said that the world is made of stories. But, if that were true, why is translating a personal experience into a story so lossy? Invariably, you must choose where the story starts and ends, which pieces of context to include or exclude, which events to highlight as important. You must choose the “moral” of the story, or lack thereof. You must adjust the story based on who you tell it to (unless, you know, you’re a bad storyteller). If you want your story to be 100% objective and accurate, my advice is don’t tell a story at all; just live it, and then your life will be 100% accurate to itself.
In atheist circles, we occasionally circulate deconversion stories. They’re probably most common among people who recently left religion, and then after enough time people stop caring so much any more. I wrote a deconversion story back in 2009, so long ago that I don’t even remember it. It’s not a story I need to tell over and over, even if it would be new to most readers. But I might still tell it occasionally, perhaps with different goals in mind than I had back then.
What sort of goals do we have when telling a deconversion story?
A common goal is to emphasize that it was a rational process. We considered the arguments, and came down on the side of atheism. My own story falls along these lines–I left religion because I had familiarized myself with arguments for the existence of God. Perhaps it’s trite, but it certainly highlights the asymmetry between atheism and Christianity–Christian conversion stories typically do not focus on arguments and persuasion.
On the other hand, I’ve heard deconversion stories that emphasize it as an emotional process. Perhaps there was an emotional inciting incident, or there are emotions around leaving a group that you had close connections to. I think that highlighting the emotion of deconversion serves to show why it is personally significant to people. Some people have this image of atheists as rationalistic, aloof, or eager to turn everything into a debate. But if you listen to people’s stories, you may find that it’s quite personal for a lot of people, and that could be what’s driving them.
Another flavor is deconversion stories that emphasize a long process of searching. They didn’t become atheists right away, they tried other spiritual practices. I think this could serve to show just how much consideration went into it, possibly years of searching.
I’m just speculating on a few possibilities. Perhaps when you tell your own story, you take an entirely different angle, or have entirely different motivations.
When I think about my own story and how I choose to tell it, there are a mix of different motivations. I like to emphasize the rational process of deconversion. But I also like to emphasize how un-beautiful religion was, how it failed to provide the sense of community that people say it does. For how little religion meant to me, it was no wonder I was looking at arguments for the existence of God–that was the only thing religion could possibly have going for it.
On the other hand, there is also a common response that personally rankles. I get this response from Protestants saying, well that’s Catholicism. Yeah, so your little catfight with the Catholics isn’t any of my business, go take it up with a Catholic. Also, what a blessing it was that Catholicism was so boring, because then I got out! I left Christianity three years before realizing I was queer. Disaster averted! Can I include that in my deconversion story, even though it happened three years later?
I suspect more people leave religion due to bad behavior by their fellow sheep and their shepherds than from the logical and evidentiary failures of theism. Alas, both factors abound.
Well I’m a Christian but I’ll comment on this~
Yeah, deconversion stories tend to be more about being rational and looking at the evidence, and Christian testimonies tend to be more about a personal/emotional experience of “finding God.” I wonder if a part of this is that a lot of atheists are coming from a Christian background where people are going to argue with them and tell them their reasons for deconverting are invalid. For deconversion stories that are more “emotional”, there would likely be Christians responding by saying that the person deconverted because they understood religion wrong, or they just didn’t trust God enough, etc.
“I get this response from Protestants saying, well that’s Catholicism.”
As a Protestant, I CAN CONFIRM that Protestants would say that. This kind of response is really not cool, because the Christian is making it all about them, like “well your problem is that you didn’t try my specific little quirky brand of religion” like atheists are required to consider the nuances of every little thing Christians are arguing about, before they’re “allowed” to be atheists.
My experience is rather the opposite of Pierce Butler’s. I early on had difficulty with the mystical end of religion, and could never get my mind wrapped around prayer. I think my persistent inability to believe in prayer was probably the seed. But the more or less traditional New England Christians I grew up with were for the most part fine and admirable people, with viewpoints I agreed with (they tended toward peace and tolerance and rational lives). I was slow abandoning religion in part for what might be considered social reasons. My route to atheism went more from going along with religion on the assumption the problem was mine, a non-creedal sort of “don’t worry about the details,” to something like deism, diminishing until there was nothing left. I’m quite happy dropping the whole thing, and truly believe that there is no god nor any purpose to the universe, but I can understand why some people can’t accept that, and I would still consider myself “Christian friendly,” as most of the horror stories about religious transgression are out of my experience, and experience suggests that it’s at least possible to be a Christian without being a fool.